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Rock Band: Battle of the Bands

The GameSpy crew takes on Rock Band in round one of a battle royale between 10 online sites.

Behind every rock legend, there is a story.

Usually, it's a tale of of sex, drinking and violence, often loaded with embellishments, half-truths and outright lies.

This... is one of those stories.

Musicians Wanted

It started a few weeks ago, when the seventeen companies working on Rock Band (we lost count after Harmonix, MTV and EA) announced a "Battle of the Bands" between ten leading online game review sites: GameSpy, IGN, GameSpot, 1UP and others. About a month before the game's release, we'd receive preview hardware and software, and each week we'd square off in some sort of competition leading up to the finals. Immediately, the halls of GameSpy HQ filled with debate. Who would be in the band? Who'd play what?

Of course, we had at least one ace in the hole: Sal 'Sluggo' Accardo. Our resident multiple-tourney-winning Guitar Hero champion would handle guitar chores on Expert. But what about the other instruments? That was tougher, as the following scenario seemed to play out repeatedly:

"Are you ready for the Battle of the Bands?"

"Totally. I am SO down to play bass. On Medium."

"That's cool, but we already have six people who want to do that. What we really need is a drummer or a singer."

"Well, ummm... I can play bass on Medium."

And so the problem of finding a drummer and singer was shelved for the moment while a name for the band was chosen.

One trip to a Ninja-themed New York restaurant later, we had it: "Ninja, please!" We honestly heard one ninja waiter say this to another... shortly before crawling up to the ceiling near the ladies room and jumping down at people. (This part of the story is absolutely true.) Now armed with a name, the quest for the rest of the band resumed...

For the entire following weekend, editors honed their skills. There was Fargo, showing off bass chops on Hard. And then there was the Sluggo-on-Drums experiment, which showed a great deal of promise. But still, even after working our way through a massive chunk of the game's "World Tour" mode (a story for another day) we were without a singer, and were forced to go with an ad hoc lineup: PC EiC Sluggo on guitar, Exec Editor Fargo on drums, console editor Gerald on bass, and a combination of editorial director Bryn / video guru Eduardo / anyone-willing-to-sing on vocals. As our Tuesday showdown with TeamXbox approached, there was more than a little nervousness running through the ranks.

Show(down)time

Finally, it was time for the first match. For the initial round, everyone would be playing 1v1 matches online: vocals, then bass, then drums and guitar. This marked the first time we'd tested Rock Band's online play, and the interface, while basic, got the job done.

Once inside Rock Band's multiplayer menu, there are a number of options for things like local band play or the Tug of War mode. For this round, we'd be playing Score Duel, which works just like Guitar Hero's "Pro Face-Off" mode: with the screen split down the middle, both players play the entire song from start to finish, each going for the highest score.

Hooking up with our TeamXbox rivals took some time, as the only two matchmaking options available were QuickMatch (which connects you with a random opponent), or the ability to challenge someone in your friends list. This leads to some questions about whether you'll be able to set filters to play specific songs or if you'll have a hard time finding players who want to play a particular difficulty (we'll be answering this question in later previews).

For this tournament, Harmonix and co. turned to the popular community site Scorehero.com to build a custom site and interface for all the competitors to ready up and upload their scores. So, with everything set to go, we readied up and were shown the first song: Faith No More's "Epic." And off we went...